955 BE bottlenecking?

[delielejdeath]

I recently purchased a new build,
AMD x4 Phenom II 955 Black Edition (C3 125W)
ASUS M4A78LT-M LE
2x2GB Kingston 1333mhz
1GB 5670 Sapphire DDR5(already had it)
I haven't overclocked a single spec.

The board says it supports only 95W processors and mine is 125W, but windows rated the processor 7.3, and it did so on the basis of the calculations per second so I guess its performance is not being held back, how do I know if its being held back?
What impact will the CPU have on the mobo or vice versa, since I'm out of money I can't buy a new mobo, or CPU cooler, at idle 800mhz the temperature is 35-40c of both motherboard and CPU, I played Red Faction Armageddon for 6hrs at a stretch and saw the CPU at 51c and 47c (It was the same everytime I checked until I was playing probably 50% max load)
So is it safe or I still have a risk of burning out the CPU/mobo, does warranty cover this or I should work off my ass to save atleast the processor?
For the sake of curiosity I did expect about double the fps in some games since I upgraded from core 2 duo e7400, but armageddon even hit 17fps at some locations(1920x1080 high,4xmsaa), is the processor not living upto its expectation or is the graphic card not allowing it to?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Id say the voltage regulation modules on the board are only rated to 95w which is why they put that limit (just a guess) so using that cpu you take a risk of the motherboard burning out. You say you upgraded from a core 2 duo... A phenom 2 is pretty similar in performance clock for clock/core for core. so you essentially have more cores thats all.

 

[Stardude82]

That purchase was almost a complete waste of money if you were expecting more FPS. My rule of thumb is to spend about two thirds as much money on your CPU as your GPU. AMD and Intel don't make any desktop CPUs (with the possible exception of the Celeron 4xx) which would bottleneck that card.

 

[delielejdeath]

well I got it only for 3000INR, so I thought it isn't a bad deal, how long can the setup last?
It'll take almost 6months for me to gather money for a good motherboard, can it survive that much?
I clocked it down to 2400mhz, just to be safe

 

[geekapproved]

If it's running at 3.2, then I don't think it's being held back, so in gaming, that video card is the limiting factor here (bottleneck). Depending on what resolution you use, the higher the resolution, the more load on the gpu, the lower the resolution, the more load on the cpu.

Why did you buy a 95w limited board and use a 125w cpu? Doesn't make sense.
I doubt it will last long.

I'd say 2.8ghz would be ok.